


Cycle

by megastarstrike



Category: Mother 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushuu | EarthBound
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eating Disorders, Gen, Purging, Self-Esteem Issues, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 17:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megastarstrike/pseuds/megastarstrike
Summary: All throughout his life, Ness had been taught to not associate his self-worth with numbers. But as long as his BMI remained a solid 27.5, he would raise his middle finger high in the faces of those who had parroted that message and continue this destructive cycle.





	Cycle

Ness’s day started promptly at seven in the morning with his mother yelling at him to come downstairs for breakfast and Tracy yelling at him to go downstairs already so she could sleep in. He shouted something back about wanting to sleep more than eat, and to some degree, it’s true.

He pulled the blankets back over his head and willed himself to sleep.

He doesn’t. There was nothing he would rather do than go downstairs and eat some of his mother’s cooking, but he had seen it firsthand: the butter, oil,  _ calories _ that went into something as simple as scrambled eggs. Who needed that many calories to function?

Ness himself, as a 5’4 teenager who weighed in at one hundred sixty pounds (god, that number made him want to crawl back under the covers and never come out again), needed two thousand calories a day if he wanted to maintain his weight. But honestly, that number was suspicious, so he liked to think of fifteen hundred as his maintenance calories. And if he wanted to lose weight, he couldn’t pig out at every opportunity; he would restrict himself to below one thousand calories daily. Even that felt like too much at times.

Ness reviewed his meal plans for the day before drifting back to sleep.

 

* * *

Ness loved his friends but by god, if they kept eating in front of him without a care in the world, he would flip the table over.

It was lunchtime. They were supposed to eat. None of this was their fault.

Paula had brought a salad from home, dressed in a white ranch he wasn’t familiar with. Jeff, being the person he was, picked at a packet of cookies while he worked on plans for a bottle rocket. Poo brought something he called a brain food lunch every day, and Ness honestly still wasn’t sure what exactly it was.

Assuming there was nothing other than lettuce and spinach in the salad along with the ranch, he estimated its calories to be around two hundred fifty. Jeff definitely wasn’t going to finish the packet, so he probably consumed two hundred calories. And Poo? Judging by how much skinnier he was compared to him, Ness would put the brain food lunch at four hundred calories.

“Ness, you’re not gonna eat?” Paula asked.

Ness glanced down at his own lunch: a grease-filled burger given to him by the school. The school’s nutrition website had put the burger at three hundred calories, but he wasn’t sure how much he could trust that.

Disgusting. He couldn’t even put a single vegetable on his plate? Wasn’t he supposed to be some sort of athlete?

Ness met his friends’ worried gazes with a grin. “Nah, I’m not that hungry. Don’t worry about it.”

Paula pouted but returned to her own lunch. “Okay. If you say so.”

With that, Jeff continued clicking away at his calculator while Poo cleaned up the remains of his lunch.

Ness tossed his uneaten lunch in the trash can with pride swelling in his chest.

 

* * *

“You wanna grab a drink with us?”

Tony’s voice had no hint of malice in it, nor was he the type of person to choose that kind of tone with his words, but Ness couldn’t help but feel as if he was being attacked.

Jeff and another kid from their robotics club he couldn’t recognize stared in anticipation for a response.

Ness stared straight ahead, but the fat on his arms felt squishier than ever and he could feel his thighs pressed against each other even when they were so far apart. He felt his stomach bulging over his pants and the fat hanging off his calves. He didn’t tilt his head down in fear of feeling the double chin he knew was down there.

He had done so well today; he wasn’t about to break it for some shitty sugar-filled drink.

“Why do you sound like we’re about to hit up a bar?” Ness laughed. “But nah, I’m good. You guys go ahead.”

Jeff frowned. “Are you sure? We were gonna get your favorite drink, too. I still owe you from last time we went.”

Their last hangout was five months ago. How Jeff still remembered that was beyond him. Stop being a responsible friend, Jeff.

Ness’s mind scrambled for an excuse. “I have to stay behind and do some work anyway. I’ll join you next time, okay?”

Jeff still seemed unsure but accepted his answer and walked out of the school with the others.

Ness crumpled in his seat, his heart lurching and stomach knotted.

He missed his friends.

 

* * *

It was eleven at night after everyone had gone to sleep when Ness found himself digging through the pantry for something to eat. Anything.

Dinner was two hard-boiled eggs. One hundred forty calories. He should have went to sleep immediately after, brushed his teeth, taped his mouth shut, something to keep him from binging like an idiot.

But here he was, binging downstairs, out of sight. A bag of potato chips Tracy left unfinished, two packs of cookies, the entire bag of popcorn Ness had been saving for a cheat day, some fruit snacks (he didn’t even know how many), a bag of pretzels, and to finish it all off, a granola bar. He didn’t even like granola bars, but he ate it anyway.

It was eleven-thirty when he was no longer blacked out from the haze of food and the repercussions of what he had just consumed hit him. 

His stomach was bloated. He could feel the fat crawling inside him already. No, no, no, no, no—

Anxiety sparked off his skin as he cleaned up all the wrappers from his binge. Those were the only reliable count of calories he had, but he didn’t want to know.

Ness hurried into the bathroom and locked the door before leaning over the toilet.  _ Ah, shit, here we go again. _

Heh. Even through his distress, at least he still had memes on his side.

Purging should have been easy at this point with all the experience he had under his belt. But he just had to eat chips and cookies, huh? The foods he still hated to purge because of how they just refused to get down his fucking throat? Good job, Ness.

It was painful, but he managed to purge himself of the calories he had taken in. Instinct screamed at him to start counting how many calories he had consumed and purged, but…

Half an ounce of chips was around eighty-five calories. Those two packs of cookies were five hundred sixty. The bag of popcorn was one hundred thirty. Luckily, one bag of fruit snacks was forty-five calories, so those would add up to less than two hundred calories. He didn’t know how many calories were in the pretzels or granola bar, but he would estimate it to be around four hundred just to be safe. That was one thousand three hundred seventy five calories total. Almost double his daily limit.

As for how many calories he had purged? He didn’t have a goddamn clue.

Ness stood up with shaky legs and rinsed his mouth out. He was already ugly enough; he didn’t need jacked up teeth to go with it. He waited half an hour before brushing his teeth and heading up to bed with guilt and shame suffocating him.

Ness crawled into bed and promised he would do better the next day.

The next morning, Ness’s day started promptly at seven in the morning with his mother yelling at him to come downstairs for breakfast and Tracy yelling at him to go downstairs already so she could sleep in.

**Author's Note:**

> these experiences are not universal across all people with eating disorders. thank you for reading.


End file.
